Clumsy
by red champagne
Summary: It was funny how, no matter how flimsy his excuses were, people always took them. Because it didn't really matter one way or the other to them. He was just clumsy. oneshot a little bitter adopted a plot bunny from the Naruto Plot Bunny Orphanage


**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

Plot Bunny: Shikamaru's mother is abusive, and no one seems to be able to figure out why he keeps showing up with bruises and cuts. Shikamaru muses on the fact that no one ever suspects the mother.

_The first day of school. He dresses himself, makes breakfast in the kitchen. He hears a small moan. His mother is starting to wake up. He splits the scrambled eggs between two plates. He picks one up, the one with the most, and warily brings it to his mother's room. It is dark inside, the drapes drawn. "Mother?" He wanders closer to the mass on the bed, nearly tripping over a pile of clothes in his way. "Mother? I have breakfast."_

_His mother's head appears from the mass of sheets. Her face is sunken, her eyes dark. She sees the eggs in his hand. She grabs it and throws it across the room, into the wall. The plate splinters, and a shard flies and nicks his cheek. His tears make the cut sting even more. "He's not coming back, Mother. Father's not coming back."_

"_Shut up! Get out of my sight, you worthless thing!"_

_It astounds him how quickly she can change from being hungover, to screaming at him at the top of her lungs._

He hears them talking, whispering about her, and himself. "Poor, woman. He left her, you know? And she's left to take care of such a clumsy son."

Since that first day, the first day she hurt him, the first day of school, he told people that it was all nothing. It was him. He was clumsy.

It was funny how, even when his excuses were so flimsy, people took it, because it didn't really matter one way or the other to them.

"_Mother, I'm home," he calls to a silent house. "Mother?" He rushes into the kitchen. She is slumped on the table, an empty bottle of sake hanging loosely in her hands. Her hair is stringy, dirty. She smells. "When was the last time you took a shower, Mother?"_

_She lifts her head slowly. She sees him. She stumbles out of her chair, knocking it over, and approaches him. She gets closer. He does not move._

_Slap!_

_The sound echoes. His cheek burns._

"_You stupid, worthless, clumsy thing. You know what they say about you? You bring dishonor to this family!"_

_Another slap. He turns and walks through the doorway. He pauses. "You should take a shower, Mother."_

_He is thirteen. He is used to it._

"I know we've accepted it before, but you were young then, and it was a difficult time, seeing as your father left and all. But you are a chunin now. You should not be this clumsy. It will be the death of you."

"I'm sorry, sensei."

He gingerly touches the bruise on his cheek and walks out. That simple task, walking, reminds him of the other pains he has, the bruises, all over his body.

How he hates that word: clumsy.

_She is drunk. She is always drunk. Is she ever sober? No, he thinks. Probably not. He can smell the sake on her breath, the disgusting stench flooding his senses. It's hard to breathe. The stench is overwhelming. She holds tight around his neck. Tighter, tighter. Finally, she seems to lose the strength. She drops him, and he falls to the floor. "Useless," she spits. "Useless."_

_He is already thinking of what he'll say, as the ugly yellow bruises begin to form around his throat._

"Aren't you hot?" his friend's ask. They are in a bar. His twenty-first birthday. He is wearing an ugly tan turtle-neck. "Why don't you take it off?"

He shakes his head. "Troublesome," he says.

"I get it. You got a girlfriend, don't you? Hiding love marks, I bet."

The others chime in. "You got a special someone? Are there _love marks_ under that sweater?"

He smiles a tight, ironic smile. "Yeah, I guess."

_She doesn't have the strength to break bones. Bruises, yes. Big, fat, ugly, black-blue bruises. But not bones. Not yet. She screams at him. She picks up the kitchen knife, the first time she's held it in years. There is now a cut on his cheek, on his stomache, on his arm. Blood flows. "I ought to kill you! Put the world out of its misery! You're nothing but a stupid, stupid, useless, worthless, clumsy fool!"_

_He is used to those words. The knife is new._

"How on earth did you get these cuts?" She stares open-mouthed at his wounds. "You haven't been on a mission in weeks!"

He gives her a pleading look. "Please just heal me."

"You come here in the middle of the night and expect me to heal you without so much as an explanation? This isn't even the first time!"

He sighs. "I'm clumsy."

"Bull," she says. "Bull_shit." _The first person to call him on it. But she doesn't push, and heals him anyway.

_He comes home. She is dead. Her black hair, streaked with gray, spills over the edge of the messy bed. Her eyes are wide, unseeing, glazed. A bottle of alcohol sits in her hand, several more scattered on the floor. Her mouth is slightly open. He walks out, and to the Hokage's office. "My mother," he speaks slowly, as if testing the words out, "has died."_

"_I'm so sorry."_

_He nods curtly. "Thank you."_

He sees her again, after several weeks, in the market. His wounds, she says, are healing nicely. "No new injuries? Are you no longer _clumsy_?"

He smiles at her, a smile so mean it's practically a sneer, directed at everyone _but_ her, and says, "Clumsy?" – he remembers all the missions, though fatigued and empty, he didn't so much as _stumble_ _– _"I've never been _clumsy_."

* * *

**_The "she" could be anybody. I was thinking Sakura. Nothing romantic, because she already has a soulmate: Deidara, and the other Akatsuki members. But really, it could be anybody. Review please?_**

**_- Red_**


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